☀ ABOUT THE FILMS
    • THE NET (DAS NETZ)   A provocative documentary essay looking at the ways modern technology influences social relationships, affects people's minds and potentially replaces reality with virtual realities.
    This wide-ranging documentary examines several themes: emerging intellectual developments of the mid-20th century relevant in influencing and controlling communication and mass behavior; the impact of the American domestic terrorist, former mathematics professor and anarchist Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), who opposed the increasing technologization of the world; and, the development of the internet in the 1980s.
    Dammbeck links these elements to ask what the unlimited development of information technology means for human society. The film will be followed by a Q&A and discussion with director Lutz Dammbeck.
    • OVERGAMES   Starting with games developed for use in pyschiatric therapy and their commercial extension via television – Beat the Clock (USA) and Just Don't Get Nervous (Germany), Dammbeck's documentary explores mid-20th century psychiatric theories underpinning the American denazification and reeducation program in post-WWII West Germany. The film will be followed by Q&A and discussion with director Lutz Dammbeck.
☀ ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
    East German filmmaker, media artist, painter and author Lutz Dammbeck has had a prolific career exploring the relationship between art and reality, in particular technology, revolution and terrorism.
    His film materials, sketches, drawings and documents are housed at the Academy of Arts in Berlin as well as at other important archives, including at the Filmmuseum Potsdam, Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, Zentrum für Kunst und Medien in Karlsruhe and the Zentrum für Künstlerpublikationen at the Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst in Bremen.
    Too extensive to display here, Dammbeck's complete bio, awards and filmography can be found at the DEFA site, UM-Amherst.
☀ ABOUT THE NATIONAL TOUR & U.C. CFMS
    Cincinnati is one of seven cities, totalling fourteen institutions, on the national Lutz Dammbeck Retrospective Tour – Washington, New York City, Boston, Amherst, Portland and East Lansing – including the National Gallery of Art, the Anthology Film Archives, M.I.T., UM-Amherst, and multiple Goethe-Institut locations.
    This retrospective is supported by the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; the DEFA-Stiftung, Berlin, Germany; the program "Wunderbar Together: Germany and the U.S."
    Hosting the retrospective locally is the University of Cincinnati Center for Film & Media Studies, a film and media culture hub that fosters partnerships between scholars, students, artists, and media professionals in U.C. community and throughout Cincinnati, the region and around the globe.